All leaders are dreadfully unpopular

Interesting. From Europe's Merkel, Macron, May less popular than Trump by Paul Bedard.

I keep making the point in conversations with friends that the Trump surprise victory in our 2016 election is simply another data point in a much larger trend. That among all the large settled, long-standing democracies across the OECD, there is an emerging divergence between the electorate and the insular elite. Voters are everywhere turning against those who seek to represent them.

My suspicion is that voters are turning against the elite because the elite (politicians, bureaucrats, media) are seeking to govern voters, not represent them. There is, essentially, a democracy deficit. But that is an explanation of the phenomenon rather than a confirmation that the phenomenon is real.

The above article lays out the details, with the caveat that polling accuracy is deeply suspect.

Popularity of key OECD leaders:

Trump (USA, 330m people) - 42%

Markel (Germany, 83m) - 40%

May (Britain, 66m) - 28%

Marcon (France, 67m) - 28%

That's 216m Europeans who have an even dimmer view of their elected leaders than do Americans. I couldn't find numbers for Spain (incipient secession, 47m), Italy (financial collapse, 61m), and Greece (economic and financial collapse, 11m), can probably safely be added, bringing the total to 335m Europeans in countries where the electorate is disgusted by their elite and whose elite are disgusted by their electorate.

In The Fourth Revolution: The Global Race to Reinvent the State by John Micklethwait and‎ Adrian Wooldridge address some issues related to a democracy deficit, or perhaps, more accurately, governmental sclerosis owing to institutional bloat. I am not convinced of their thesis but they are observing the same phenomenon.

Instead of fighting our political battles as to which corrupt/incompetent/disconnected (pick your descriptor) party is most dysfunctional, we ought to be, I think, turning our attention to the philosophical side. How do we fix the rent seeking, regulatory capture and parasitical class institutionalization which afflict so many advanced democracies? I don't think it is reformed statism which is where much of the little conversation that there is goes. I think it is the harder job of living up to our original aspirations of our Age of Enlightenment Classical Liberal ideals. How do we ensure that government is indeed the vehicle for all citizens, not just those who self-anoint themselves as leaders?